Previous Entry
Previous Plover Warden Entry
Official Plover Count:
29 adults
13 pairs
(before today's survey)
Today's Bird Sightings:
snowy egret
redwing blackbird
6 common terns
2 great black backed gulls
24 ring billed gulls
common grackle
3 double crested cormorants
2 house sparrows
6 herring gulls
least tern
purple martin
x
x
x
My notebook entry on the weather for
Monday's shift reads
"foggy". The entry for today reads "very foggy". I took this
picture looking south from the northern beach boundary. I
don't think I could have seen the end of my hand, let alone
a piping plover.
There were a few visitors out and about, there always are no matter how bad the weather is, but the beach was quiet enough that I saw lots of birds who don't usually forage along the waterline doing so. A common grackle, a purple martin, and a male/female pair of house sparrows were all hanging around on the beach catching things. No, I don't know what they were eating - the visibility was so bad I was lucky I could tell what the birds were other than "small, medium, and large". A flock of ring billed gulls, two black backed gulls, a half dozen herring gulls, and three cormorants all sat in the sand just above the tide line for about 2 hours just resting. Some of the ring billed gulls appeared to be asleep.
|
Flightless Cormorant, Isabela Island |
Two of the cormorants were walking around and one was drying its wings. On a day like this you've got to wonder about how long it takes for those prehistoric looking wings to dry. I have often wondered why cormorants evolved the way they have - with those "less than waterproof" wings. When I went to the Galapagos, I encountered flightless cormorants. They were so adapted to diving/swimming that their wings looked like little stubs - vestigial rather than functional. Our guys still have usable wings, they just get really soaked. If their wings take as long to dry as my socks do on a day like this, vestigial wings might seem like an advantage. Of course, these guys need to fly to get away from here in the winter never mind any other reason - not that they go that far and some do stay around, but in general they do fly away from the wintry weather. The double-crested ones that is. The great cormorants are around in the winter, but I never see them in summer. Two visitors asked me if the gulls were the birds whose nests we were protecting. One asked if it was the cormorants. |
People seem to find cormorants alternately entertaining and revolting. Personally, I'm one of the ones who finds them entertaining. They just look so ungainly, so not of this time and place. I loved this description in Mary Parker Buckles' Margins:. She calls it their "daft-bishop" act.
The ancient archbishop rose for the blessing and began to stretch out his arms. Suddenly, as if possessed, he was seized with a movement so erratic that his entire body seemed to quake. His arms flapped repeatedly back and forth, and his black robes trailed them. The speed and violence of the gesture was tantrum like, uncanny.
In seconds the old cleric was calm, as if he'd never undergone the spell. He spread his arms. His elbows angled up, and the hem of his dark vestments paralleled them into a pair of inverted, distorted V's. The caped figure had the shape of a bat, or of someone who'd hung himself out to dry. - Margins, Mary Parker Buckles
One of the refuge biologists came by so I asked her how the plovers are doing since the storms. Six nests either got washed over in the storm or abandoned because of predators. One nest on Sandy Point has started to hatch and another one should hatch this weekend. This seems late to me. I checked my trusty notebook and sure enough at this time last year there were already 14 chicks. This year's weather has been so weird with the May record rains and the June record rains.
I hope none of the nest abandonment she recorded was because of those two dogs who got past me on Monday.
x
x
x
x
